KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Boys volleyball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the country — and there’s a push for Kansas to add it as a high school sport.
Blue Valley North junior Joshua Lobert grew up in China, where he started playing volleyball in middle school.
“Once I moved to the United States, I realized it was a girls only sport,” Lobert said. “I was pretty surprised.”
It’s common for both boys and girls to play volleyball overseas, but boys volleyball primarily has been a coastal sport in the U.S. It’s only been in the last few years that boys volleyball saw a bump in popularity across the Midwest.
“I know a lot of friends who didn't even know boys volleyball is a thing,” Lobert said.
Bishop Miege junior Zeke Rodriguez said he also gets quizzical looks when he tells friends he plays volleyball.
“Sometimes they are in disbelief, like they didn't even know it was a thing that boys can do,” he said.
The Missouri State High School Activities Association approved boys volleyball three years ago. Now in its third season, it will be split into two classes for the first time this spring, but it remains strictly a club sport in Kansas.
Boys volleyball supporters are set to ask the Kansas Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, or KIAAA, to recommend the state sanction the sport at its spring conference this week.
The KIAAA can’t authorize a new sport on its own, but its recommendation would be forwarded to the Kansas State High School Activities Association, or KSHSAA, if 70% of members in attendance vote for the proposal.
“Our hope is that the KIAAA gives us enough votes, positive votes, for sanctioning boys volleyball that they can carry that proposal on to KSHSAA,” Austin Isham, the director of boys volleyball for the Lenexa-based MAVS volleyball club, said Monday as teams from across Johnson County scrimmaged.
Isham, who also coaches the Blue Valley Southwest girls volleyball team, grew up in the Kansas City area, fell in love with volleyball, played at Graceland College and returned to the area on a mission to grow the sport.
“I knew that there needed to be more of a boys volleyball presence,” Isham said. But he didn’t character the effort as a struggle: “A fight is a strong word. It's not really a fight. We're just trying to grow the awareness of the sport.”
Isham helped start the Kansas City High School Boys Volleyball League in 2019 with the goal of getting the sport sanctioned in Kansas and Missouri. It was rebranded in 2023 to the Kansas High School Boys Volleyball League, which has grown to 32 teams and more than 500 athletes.
The league’s state championship is set for May 5 at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence.
To spike awareness in boys volleyball, Rodriguez agreed that awareness is key.
“We need to get started younger and earlier,” he said. “I honestly think as long as we can get it to be more outreached, I think people will also start to fall in love with the sport.”
It’s part of Isham’s sales pitch for boys volleyball.
“Any boy that picks up this sport, I always tell him, ‘You're about to play your favorite sport. This is going to be your new favorite sport,’” he said.
Both Lobert and Rodriguez would love for boys volleyball to get fast tracked, so they could represent their school as seniors next spring.
“Hopefully, this vote passes then I can end my high school career with a sanctioned sport in Kansas,” he said. “That'd be great.”
Lobert was the driving force behind starting the Mustangs’ boys volleyball club team and he hopes to play in college.
“If we were able to be a sanctioned sport and get it in a high school where it's free for people to play, it would grow the sport so much more,” he said.
Rodriguez plays tennis for Miege, so he knows how differently boys volleyball would be received if KSHSAA started sponsoring it and created a high school state tournament.
“It's (school sports) just such a different vibe from club volleyball, because you're getting shouted out at school, people know what you're doing and it’s just like the whole community is behind you,” he said.
The KIAAA agenda also includes proposals related to girls flag football, eliminating third-place games at state tournaments, moving softball to the fall, large-class state tourney seeding, expanding the basketball schedule to 26 games, and expanding the football schedule to 10 games among other items.
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